It seems that most people think piracy is to blame. The piracy being file-sharing. I think that we need to reconsider what we mean by piracy in the conversation of music.

Piracy should also include Youtube and instant messengers like Whatsapp or BBM. In this one-sided conversation, piracy should cover anywhere that media can be obtained for free.

Hundreds of billions of individual song plays happen on Youtube every year, without charge, the annual amount of music file shares on P2P networks is only a fraction of that.

They say file sharing is the biggest villain, but really, the entire popular practise of music being freely available (outside of radio networks) is the true evil.

As I have previously pointed out to no recognition, if the big companies remove all unpaid distributions of their media, there will still be free media. The indie bands and underground artists may take over with their own market, separate from the paid media and infinitely more attractive.